20. Like every family, they had their secrets
It was amusing to Tristan to try to see his family through anyone else's eyes. They made quite a lovely picture, from his tall, handsome father to his always impeccably dressed mother to his almost impish brother and then there was...Tristan.
Clearly, if one of them didn't fit in, it was him. He had inherited his father's height, his distinguished good looks, but not his natural gregarious character, and certainly not his ability to make friends quickly. Instead, he had gotten his mother's more reserved mannerisms, but none of her worry about social mores or keeping up with everyone else. His brother Samuel, on the other hand, seemed to have inherited his father's good looks and cheerful personality, his mother's almost effortless ease to “make nice' with everyone else, but none of their drive or intelligence.
There were secrets, of course—every family had their secrets. No one saw the almost ruthless way that Robert tried to drive his children to fulfill the goals that he himself had never been talented enough to achieve. No one saw the manipulative way that their mother tried to trick them into doing all of the things that her friend's children were doing. They wanted not children, but tools. They wanted means to best their friends and impress their acquaintances. They didn't see two vulnerable boys so much as a legacy, a means to better their name and raise it to a level they had only dreamed of.
Those secrets were ones that Tristan would never tell. There was an affection there for his parents, even if he knew he could never live up to their expectations. At first he had tried, struggled to be the person they wanted so desperately, and then he just gave up. When he discovered that he couldn't meet their chief expectation (to make it into Slytherin) he gave up almost entirely and from that moment on decided to be his own man.
There were still concessions made to his parents, still times when he had to give in to their demands in the name of keeping the peace, but he managed to live his own life, to make his own way. He never regretted that. Not when his parents chose to change their wills to leave the majority of their holdings to Sameul, not when they suggested that he look for his own flat, not even when he saw how much they started to favor Samuel over him. What he chose to give up allowed him more freedom, more space be his own man, than he had ever imagined.
The Bradley family was not the way it seemed. Tristan, who appeared to the rest of the world to be the quiet one, the almost oddly introspective boy that refused to do the things he should like find a wife and give his family an heir, was in reality the one who was freest, the one who didn't sully himself with arguments over blood purity and backwards beliefs. He was so awkward in part because of his shy, almost reserved personality, but also because he didn't want to bring a stranger in to have to deal with his family. Madeline, who looked like a proud wife and mother who had tried her best with her two boys only to have one “go astray” was in reality a nervous, manipulative woman who wasn't above using her underhanded ways on her own sons. Robert, who tried so hard to be the proud patriarch of a family just as prestigious as the Malfoys or the Lestranges, would never really be content with his place in life, with the failings that he imagined on both of his sons. Samuel, the one who most saw as the golden child of the family, was really quite overwhelmed by those expectations, and secretly wondered how he was supposed to live up to them all.
The secret of the Bradly family wasn't the secrets that they tried so hard to hide, but what was behind the secrets. The truth of the matter was, the way that the world saw them wasn't right at all, because despite it all, Tristan was the lucky one. He was free, he would make his own way, and, of all of them, he had the greatest chance to be happy of them all.
The secret for Tristan Bradly was to make his own way, and ignore what was expected.